According to the author, why should one study?
- (a)To gather information about the world
- (b)To pass the time in a creative way
- (c)For pleasure, enhanced capability and holistic growth
- (d)To become only worldly wise
Correct — C, For pleasure, enhanced capability and holistic growth. The passage opens 'Studies serve for delight, for ornament, and for ability' and adds that studies 'perfect nature' — that is, they give pleasure (delight), build capability (ability and ornament) and improve the whole person, exactly the three-fold purpose option C names.
- (a)To gather information about the world — The author frames study around delight, ornament and ability and around perfecting one's nature, not around mere information-gathering.
- (b)To pass the time in a creative way — The passage never treats study as a pastime; it warns that 'to spend too much time in studies is sloth'.
- (d)To become only worldly wise — The word 'only' is too narrow — the author lists several ends and even says the wisdom above studies is 'won by observation', so study is not merely for worldly cunning.
A reading-comprehension item on the purpose of study, testing whether you can read the author's three-fold aim from the opening lines.
This item is based on the short passage printed above Questions 41-45 in the NDA-II 2019 GAT (Series A) — a verbatim extract widely known as Francis Bacon's essay 'Of Studies'. The passage reads: "Studies serve for delight, for ornament, and for ability. Their chief use for delight, is in privateness and retiring; for ornament, is in discourse; and for ability, is in the judgment, and disposition of business. For expert men can execute, and perhaps judge of particulars, one by one; but the general counsels, and the plots and marshalling of affairs, come best from those that are learned. To spend too much time in studies is sloth; to use them too much for ornament, is affectation; to make judgment wholly by their rules, is the humor of a scholar. They perfect nature, and are perfected by experience: for natural abilities are like natural plants, that need pruning, by study; and studies themselves do give forth directions too much at large, except they be bounded in by experience. Crafty men condemn studies, simple men admire them, and wise men use them; for they teach not their own use; but that is a wisdom without them, and above them, won by observation. Read not to contradict and confute; nor to believe and take for granted; nor to find talk and discourse; but to weigh and consider." The answer follows from the opening sentence and 'They perfect nature'.
No directly related past PYQ was found.
- practice — not a real PYQ
In Bacon's 'Of Studies', 'Studies serve for delight, for ornament, and for ability' — 'ornament' here refers to their use in
- (a)decoration of a room
- (b)discourse or conversation
- (c)the judgment of business
- (d)private retirement
Answer(b) discourse or conversation — the text says ornament 'is in discourse'.
- practice — not a real PYQ
According to the passage, the general counsels and marshalling of affairs come best from
- (a)expert men
- (b)those that are learned
- (c)crafty men
- (d)simple men
Answer(b) those that are learned — expert men judge particulars, but the general plans come best from the learned.